MA student placements at the V&A Museum of Childhood

by Gemma Organ,Leicester University MA student

As part of our MA Museum Studies and Art Museum & Gallery Studies courses at the University of Leicester, Lorna Tan and I joined the MoC Learning team for an eight-week summer work placement. We got stuck into a range of exciting holiday events, which included Summer Art Camp and busy Summer Family Days.

Making cardboard chairs on the Marble Floor

Summer art camp

Summer Art Camp lasted a week. Kids aged 8 upwards enjoyed creative workshops around music, film-making and alternative art, culminating in a short animated film that all the parents loved! It was a busy but fun week, helping to prep and support facilitators with sessions across the museum. We loved working closely with some of our younger visitors and contributing towards all aspects of the programme.

Making Nordic-themed mobiles in the Make It Happen space

Nordic Family Days

We also helped co-ordinate, implement and deliver Summer Family Days exploring the five Nordic themes that ran through the Century of the Child exhibition. These lively weekly events attracted hundreds of visitors for a range of creative activities all over the museum. Our task was to make sure the artists and external facilitators leading the activities had everything they needed. We also prepped and set up the events so everything ran smoothly.

Positive feedback from visitors made this a really exciting and rewarding project to be a part of – it gave us great experience and insight into event management in museums too!

Activity assistants telling stories in the Century of the Child exhibition

Wider museum experiences

Another task was evaluation of the family learning programme. We designed new forms of visitor evaluation, analysing visitor feedback from a range of family events in 2017, and compiled a final report with recommendations for both the family programme and future visitor evaluation.

We were lucky enough to be able to explore the Museum’s collections in greater depth, too. We devised fun and engaging activities for future family trails, as well as school activities for a new learning workshop about dolls’ houses.

Our final Family Day featured animals from Spitalfields City Farm. Here we are packing up at the end of the day!

We’ve had a brilliant experience at the V&A Museum of Childhood, gaining practical skills that will prove invaluable in our future museum careers We felt a real part of the museum team!